ABOUT THIS BLOG

"A Faithful Attempt" is designed to showcase a variety of K-12 art lessons, the work of my art students, as well as other art-related topics. Projects shown are my take on other art teacher's lessons, lessons found in books or else designed by myself. Thanks for visiting!

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

So this is a little colour theory lesson to help my Grade 1 students remember their secondary colours.

I show them some ways to draw a simple clown- we talk about simple shapes and patterns they might use. They draw these in pencil, colour in with markers and outline with a black marker.

Then we move on to the 'balls'. (I literally had to say the word 'balls' about 50 times during this project: "Cut our your balls carefully! Don't lose you balls! Keep your balls in a pile after you cut them out! Did someone lose a ball? I found one on the floor! OK, glue on your balls now!") hahaha!

I traced a lid to my vitamins 6 times in a row- them photocopied this a bunch of times so I had one strip per student. (there was probably an easier way to do this in Word but oh well...)

We reviewed colour mixing and how to get secondary colours. You could have student paint these with tempera or watercolour. But I was on a time crunch, so we used oil pastels.

Then the balls get cut out and glued onto the clown paper. This took about 2- 40 minute periods for all students to complete. This project is also a great lesson in practising their cutting skills, as the circles were somewhat small and tricky for some to cut out.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

I was recently asked by a colleague, who was travelling to Nicaragua, if I could get any of my students to make some artwork that he could take to a local school he was visiting. I decided to have my Grade 4's (who are super sweet and very generous- I knew they'd have no problem donating their art) make oil pastel drawings of Canadian birds.

So the students chose their own birds from a big folder of photos I collected on my laptop. We used red and blue construction paper. I printed off a photo reference for each student. They sketched in the basic shapes first, then coloured away.

I encouraged them to lay down the colour really thick, to mix colours, and

Friday, November 7, 2014

This was a super fun collaborative project I did with the Grade 7 Social Studies teacher at my school. He's a very creative teacher and is always looking for ways to incorporate art projects into his lessons. His students were studying the Vikings and their early exploration in Canada (the famous L'Anse aux Meadows site, dated circa 1000 AD, located in the Province of Newfoundland)

L'Anse aux Meadows is the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland. It represents the farthest-known extent of European exploration and settlement of the New World before the voyages of Christopher Columbus almost 500 years later.

I was super stoked to teach a Vikings themed art lesson partly because I'm obsessed with the TV show "Vikings" on the History channel. It's a Canadian/Irish production and is beautifully filmed and brilliantly acted. The lead Viking, Ragnar, is amazing!

I showed the kids photos of ancient Viking longships. We learned their features and characteristics.

Then, on thick white paper, students started by drawing out their ship in pencil.

Then they outlined it all with Sharpies.

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They had the option of using pencil crayons or watercolours to colour in the ship.

Then, I demoed how to mix and use watercolours in a wet-on-wet technique for the sky and sea. I encouraged them to have the sea a rough blue/grey colour as it's supposed to be the Atlantic ocean.

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Favourite Quote

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” - Henry David Thoreau